Developing a conceptual framework for exploring cultural representations in Vietnamese children’s picturebooks

Abstract

In a time of globalisation, the teaching of intercultural understanding has become one of the essential components of teaching curriculum in classrooms around the world. Among various materials for teaching intercultural understanding, multicultural children’s picturebooks have been applied widely in classrooms to raise students’ awareness of cultural representations of diverse countries, especially the teaching of Asian cultures in the context of Western classrooms. However, studies in teaching intercultural understanding have also reported teachers’ difficulties in interpreting and analysing cultural elements in multicultural materials including Asian children’s picturebooks. Therefore, this paper firstly explores painters’ and illustrators’ methods in depicting cultural aspects in Vietnam. Then, the paper proposes a conceptual framework for interpreting cultural meanings children’s picturebooks about Vietnam. To do so, we conducted in-depth interviews with Vietnamese painters and illustrators who are experienced in illustrating Vietnamese culture in artworks including picturebooks. Based on interview findings with Vietnamese painters and illustrators, we propose a conceptual framework for exploring cultural aspects in Vietnamese children’s picturebooks. Grounded Theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) and qualitative research design (Burgess & Bryman, 1999; Mayring, 2014) along with influential theoretical frameworks in the field of cultural studies and children’s literature (Hall, 1976; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006; Painter et al., 2013; Weaver, 1993) are applied in the present paper. Findings in this paper are significant to researchers and teachers who are interested in working with multicultural picturebooks as well as multimodal texts to explore Asian cultures.